Forget HAL, the computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," or JARVIS, the robotic butler of fictional billionaire Tony Stark. With a voice command like this, a homeowner can activate a Bluetooth-controlled lock through Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant, August Home, the smart-lock maker, announced Thursday. The team up between August and Amazon is another step in expanding how "smart" a home can become at a reasonable price. Though gadgets to control, for instance, a house's lights, thermostat, and audio system, have been around for decades, they could only be operated at first through personal computers and control pads, and eventually tablets and smartphones. Amazon popularized the voice control of smart homes when it released Alexa in 2014.

"You no longer need an Alexa-enabled device to test your skills. Developers worldwide can use Echosim.io to experience Alexa." Alexa originated as the voice behind the increasingly popular Amazon Echo and has developed since into a powerful platform for voice-activated commands. In Echo form, Alexa can access music streaming services, control lighting and heat, order pizza, or answer simple, Googlable questions. The potential is also there for Alexa to do a lot more. With the help of some coding knowledge, customers can create their own custom commands Alexa can respond to – a big strength of the platform that means updates and improvements will be regularly created and added. Developer attraction could also be an edge for Amazon's Echo as rival tech companies like Google come out with their own versions.

Some of the people behind Siri, the voice of the iPhone's virtual assistant app, have developed a savvier bot called Viv. Viv reportedly can order a pizza with your favorite toppings, hail a taxi ride to the dentist, or order flowers for your mom by drawing on data from other web services, such as FTD, Uber, and GrubHub, with little typing, clicking, or further input from you. Instead of pre-programming scripted responses to anticipated questions, as is common with Siri and other services, Viv's artificial intelligence will let her learn her users' preferences over time, say company executives. "Tell Viv what you want and it will orchestrate this massive network of services that will take care of it," Dag Kittlaus, Viv's chief executive, told the Guardian. The bot, which The Washington Post called "one of the most highly anticipated technologies expected to come out of a start-up this year," will make its first public appearance at a conference on Monday.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to build an artificially-intelligent assistant that will control his home and eventually provide assistance with his work, he announced in a Facebook post on Sunday. The project, which Mr. Zuckerberg likened to Jarvis, the robotic butler used by Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" films, would begin with existing Internet of Things devices, which allow users to control the temperature, lights, and other electronic devices while away from home. "I'm going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I'll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home -- music, lights, temperature and so on," he wrote on the social media site. "I'll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell. I'll teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max's room that I need to check on when I'm not with her," he added, referring to his newborn daughter.

Nobody calls C3PO creepy, eerie, or spooky. But humanoid doppleganger social robots like Nadine are being found unsettling by many, both because of their appearance and also due to ethical issues connected to the ways they may be used. Nadine is a social robot made in the likeness of creator Professor Nadia Thalmann from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore). Nadine is programmed with intelligent "assistant" software similar to Siri (the Apple computer program that works as an intelligent personal assistant) and Siri's Microsoft counterpart Cortana. Nadine, however, also expresses a version of moods and emotions with the ability to remember the people she has met before as well as conversations.

We've built computers that can outplay the finest chess grandmasters in the world, virtual personal assistants that can schedule tasks and control our homes, and algorithms that can predict with increasing accuracy what we'll want to watch, read, or listen to next. But true artificial intelligence – a computer that can solve a wide range of problems through reason, planning, abstraction, and learning – hasn't come about yet. There are machines that are better than humans at specific tasks, but no machine that's as good as or better than a human at thinking. We're getting close to that point, though, Google chairman Eric Schmidt argued in an op-ed for the BBC on Saturday. Mr. Schmidt says artificial intelligence (AI) research has been steadily building since the term was first coined in 1955, and that scientists have made a few big breakthroughs in the past several years.

Facebook has finally pulled the curtains back on M, a new service on its Messenger app that acts more like a private concierge than most other digital assistants on the market. A few hundred users in San Francisco are currently testing the feature, which some compare to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, or Google Now. But what sets M apart is the level of utility, provided by a combination of both artificial intelligence and human employees. "Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments, and way more," said David Marcus, Facebook's vice president of messaging products.

At Google's annual I/O developers conference held May 28, the search engine giant unveiled new software features, as well as improvements to the Android operating system. Much of the event focused on new context-aware improvements to Google Now, Android's digital personal assistant, but one of the software's biggest features was actually rolled out secretly. This Tuesday, a representative for Google at the Search Marketing Expo in Paris premiered Google Now's location-aware search feature. The tool, which has already rolled out to most Android devices, was captured on video by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan and posted to Twitter. Location Aware Search is live unannounced feature in Google Search App.

Like a lot of teenagers, Aanya Nigam reflexively shares her whereabouts, activities and thoughts on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks without a qualm. But Aanya's care-free attitude dissolved into paranoia a few months ago shortly after her mother bought Amazon's Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud. After using the Internet-connected device for two months, Aanya, 16, started to worry that the Echo was eavesdropping on conversations in her Issaquah, Washington, living room. So she unplugged the device and hid it in a place that her mother, Anjana Agarwal, still hasn't been able to find. "I guess there is a difference between deciding to share something and having something captured by something that you don't know when it's listening," Agarwal said of her daughter's misgivings. The Echo, a $180 cylindrical device that began general shipping in July after months of public testing, is the latest advance in voice-recognition technology that's enabling machines to record snippets of conversation that are analyzed and stored by companies promising to make their customers' lives better.

Hey Siri, turn off the kitchen light. The first "smart" home gadgets that can be controlled by Apple's voice-activated digital assistant are going on sale this week, just days after rival tech giant Google announced it's building its own software for Internet-connected home appliances and other gadgets. The new products could be an important step forward for the emerging industry of "smart" or "connected" homes, where appliances, thermostats and even door locks contain computer chips that communicate wirelessly. While a number of companies are working on similar products, analysts say Apple could persuade more consumers to try them by making it easy to control different products from a familiar device, such as the iPhone. Apple announced its "HomeKit" software project a year ago, but isn't making the new products.